I dreamt last night

I dreamt last night

it might not sound much

but it’s been months

months without sleep

months without dreams

cultivating seeds of chaos

planting them in the heart

here and there, now and again

harvesting rage and insatiety

drilling the void

digging the scars

with whitened knuckles

gripping a bloodied hook

food and love-starved

when half-mad and cornered

came the realisation

that, faced with shadows

the soul was trapped

the body yielded

getting sustenance

finally, from within

first a speck of light

dancing like a floater

then summerlike sunrays

and all of a sudden

brighter than a quasar

warm, delicate, vibrant

and all I could do

after that dream

was to gowpen its light

take it to my heart

until it fused with it

so now I can

welcome the night

Lights and shadows

"I don't believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality."

in the essay "Deeds Rather Than Words" (1963), by Walt Disney, entrepreneur and animator (1901-1966)

The hunger, the hunger

 

The truth I found perhaps

wasn’t as beautiful and fulfilling

but the hunger for it was

 

From the Pierian spring

 
"A polymath is someone who is interested in everything, and nothing else."

Susan Sontag, writer, critic, polymath (1933-2004)

 

Wove and laid silhouettes

 

I am a ghost among
-----------------------

wove and laid silhouettes

------------------------------
hosts of see-through people
--------------------------------
drawn on Kozo paper
-------------------------
never really touching
-------------------------
like a raven’s silk wings
---------------------------
only ever brushing
----------------------
the obsidian night
---------------------

Eye in a sea of clouds

 

Tunnel

 

 
 

Where are we?

 

An invisible bird flies over,

but casts a quick shadow.

What is the body? That shadow of a shadow

of your love, that somehow contains
the entire universe.

A man sleeps heavily,
though something blazes in him like the sun,

like a magnificent fringe sewn up under the hem.

He turns under the covers.

Any image is a lie:

    A clear red stone tastes sweet.

    You kiss a beautiful mouth, and a key

    turns in the lock of your fear.

    A spoken sentence sharpens to a fine edge.
    

    A mother dove looks for her nest,

    asking where, ku? Where, ku?

Where the lion lies down.
Where any man or woman goes to cry.
Where the sick go when they hope to get well.

Where a wind lifts that helps with winnowing,

and, the same moment, sends a ship on its way.

Where anyone says Only God Is Real.

Ya Hu! Where beyond where.

A bright weaver's shuttle flashes back and forth,

east-west, Where-are-we? Ma ku? Maku.
like the sun saying Where are we?
as it weaves with the asking.

 

Rumi (1207-1273), in The Essential Rumi.

 

Aquaforte

Le Chemin par temps de pluie, ou Sous l'averse (between 1900 and 1910)

Henri Jourdain (1864-1931)

Cadmium sunset

 

Rue de village sous la neige au couchant, ou La neige en Norvège, circa 1904

Johannes Grimelund (1842-1917)